Study of Bush's Psyche Touches a Nerve

[Phil Graham]

Study of Bush's Psyche Touches a Nerve
   By Julian Borger
   The Guardian

   Wednesday 13 August 2003

   A study funded by the US government has concluded that conservatism can
be explained psychologically as a set of neuroses rooted in "fear and
aggression, dogmatism and the intolerance of ambiguity". As if that was not
enough to get Republican blood boiling, the report's four authors linked
Hitler, Mussolini, Ronald Reagan and the rightwing talkshow host, Rush
Limbaugh, arguing they all suffered from the same affliction.

   All of them "preached a return to an idealised past and condoned
inequality".

   Republicans are demanding to know why the psychologists behind the
report, Political Conservatism as Motivated Social Cognition, received
$1.2m in public funds for their research from the National Science
Foundation and the National Institutes of Health.

   The authors also peer into the psyche of President George Bush, who
turns out to be a textbook case. The telltale signs are his preference for
moral certainty and frequently expressed dislike of nuance.

   "This intolerance of ambiguity can lead people to cling to the familiar,
to arrive at premature conclusions, and to impose simplistic cliches and
stereotypes," the authors argue in the Psychological Bulletin.

   One of the psychologists behind the study, Jack Glaser, said the
aversion to shades of grey and the need for "closure" could explain the
fact that the Bush administration ignored intelligence that contradicted
its beliefs about Iraq's weapons of mass destruction.

   The authors, presumably aware of the outrage they were likely to
trigger, added a disclaimer that their study "does not mean that
conservatism is pathological or that conservative beliefs are necessarily
false".

   Another author, Arie Kruglanski, of the University of Maryland, said he
had received hate mail since the article was published, but he insisted
that the study "is not critical of conservatives at all". "The variables we
talk about are general human dimensions," he said. "These are the same
dimensions that contribute to loyalty and commitment to the group. Liberals
might be less intolerant of ambiguity, but they may be less decisive, less
committed, less loyal."

   But what drives the psychologists? George Will, a Washington Post
columnist who has long suffered from ingrained conservatism, noted, tartly:
"The professors have ideas; the rest of us have emanations of our
psychological needs and neuroses."

(In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is
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Phil Graham
Senior Lecturer
UQ Business School www.business.uq.edu.au
The University of Queensland
Editor, Critical Discourse Studies www.cds-web.net
Home page: www.philgraham.net/philindex.htm
ph: + 617 3381 1083 (uq ext 11083)
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